Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Horizon Line

102"x 156"

I was out in western South Dakota about four weeks ago digging dinosaurs on one of my paleontology dig trips. In addition to digging fossils I was also observing how the South Dakota horizon line appeared on a clear spring day. I made mental notes of the colors and intensity of the colors. The land masses faded to light blue just before I couldn't see any further. When teaching painting I always have the students imagine layers of very thin veiled light fabric hanging between them and the colors. The further away the land is to appear on the horizon the more layers of fabric they are looking through the achieve the proper color. Blah, blah, blah.......... Anyway, here are the intial steps I have taken to attain the illusion of distance on a flat piece on canvas inside my garage. There are three different planes of distance shown. The furthest two are very subtle in the differences in the color. It really feels like what I saw on my trip. (I have been working away on this thing. To be continued....next starting the mid distance land masses!)

0 Comments:

About Me

Name:Darren Maurer

Location:Sioux City, Iowa

I'm an artist from Sioux City, Iowa. I grew up in Grand Island, Nebraska and have lived in Sioux City since 1989. Visit my website at www.darrenmaurer.com to see the full volume of my work. For this blog I'm going to try to make a painting each day. I may miss a day here and there just due to that thing called life. The paintings on this blog will be small oils. (I like to call them Miniature Masterpieces.) On occasion I may post a larger painting with the dimensions listed. I'm going to use an auction format (via ebay) to sell the Miniture Masterpieces. Paintings that don't sell at auction can be seen in the archive section and can be purchased with a personal check, money order, pay pal, or major credit cards through pay pal at the listed price.